The present invention is related to a process of keyword generation for Internet sites and Internet pages. More particularly, the present invention relates to methodologically assigning keywords for promoting Internet sites and Internet pages through a conventional search engine by accessing a data pool of applicable keywords based upon the Internet site's or page's content and topical category assignment.
An Internet site typically contains a plurality of pages that makes up that particular Internet site. Each individual Internet page contained within that Internet site may contain content, while still relevant to the main Internet site, may be somewhat different. As such, it is typical that individual Internet pages, as well as an Internet site, contain keywords describing the Internet sites and pages' content.
A keyword typically consists of a significant word or a string of words from a title or content of a document in order to index its contents for easy and quick searching and subsequent access. Keywords have proven to be invaluable to the Internet due to the vast amount of available documents contained therein. Keywords allow an Internet user to search through literally millions of documents based upon a single word or phrase which is relevant to the user's required documents. As such, only those documents and Internet sites pertaining to the desired keyword are returned. Without the ability of keyword searching, the Internet would essentially be useless because the required information would not be easily located.
As such, Internet users searching for products, services, or information typically use a keyword based Internet search engine, such as YAHOO!, GOOGLE, EXCITE, and the like to find Internet sites and pages. The user starts their search by entering a search query containing at least one expected keyword inside the search engine input box, which the search engine then uses to search its database and generate a return list of relevant Internet sites and pages.
As to be expected, the higher on the result list for a particular keyword, the more likely the Internet site or page will be visited by an Internet user, especially when the result lists can contain hundreds of thousands of relevant Internet sites and pages. As such, it is essential for a successful Internet site or page to be listed as high in the result list as possible. It is thus imperative that correct and accurate keywords are assigned for a particular Internet site or page, otherwise its value would be greatly underappreciated by not being returned in by an appropriate keyword search.
Typically, Internet site promoters or designers determine what keywords are assigned to their Internet site, and its subsequent pages, based upon their own subjective determination of what keywords are relevant to the content of the Internet site and its underlying Internet pages. The Internet site promoter typically utilizes one of many different subjective relevancy techniques to determine which keywords should be associated with the specific Internet site and its pages. This is typically accomplished by relating the Internet site's and page's content to the definitional meaning or typical linguistic usage of the keyword. Once that is determined and after the Internet site promoter submits his Internet site information and designated keywords, the search engine provider determines which Internet site or page is the most relevant for that particular queried keyword term and lists that Internet site or page first in the results list and the rest of the keyword matched Internet sites and pages in order of their respective relevancy. A limitation of this process is that there is vast inconsistency between like Internet sites and pages and the keywords which were assigned by the Internet site promoters due to subjective preferences of the Internet site promoters. The present invention overcomes this limitation by, for example, methodologically recommending and assigning appropriate keywords contained within respective topical category keyword pools to Internet sites and pages based upon the Internet site's or page's content and subsequent assignment to a topical database, thus negating the need for Internet site promoter subjective keyword determination.
Free Internet site and page listings are utilized by Internet site promoters trying to attract Internet users to their site without spending any money. An Internet site promoter typically submits his Internet site's or page's content information, in the form of keywords, to a public search engine provider, which will in turn index that Internet site or pages in their database based upon the designated keywords. The Internet search engine provider may also randomly search the Internet on its own and index located Internet sites and pages to ensure an accurate and current indexing. As such, whenever an Internet search user inputs a designated keyword associated with that Internet site or page, the Internet site or page will be listed in the return list due to its placement in the search provider's indexing system.
One of the techniques the search engine provider typically employs to determine an Internet site's or page's relevancy ranking for a particular keyword is to search the Internet site's or page's source code. Particularly, the source code with the most pertinent relevancy information is the meta tag source code contained within the header of the Internet site home page, and subsequently invisible to the ordinary user, of any given Internet site. Meta tags typically contain content information about the Internet site, usually consisting of a description of the Internet site and expected keywords that describe the contents of the Internet. For example, an Internet site about tax law would likely have the following meta tag information within its Internet site home page to describe the content about the Internet site: <meta name=“description” content=A website about tax law and information about avoiding the “taxman”>. The Internet site would also probably have another meta tag that includes the following information which lists the expected keywords for that Internet site: <meta name=“keywords” content=“tax, law, tax law, tax man, taxes, IRS, red flags, audit, audits, tax audit”>. In this example, if an Internet search user entered any of the keywords tax, law, tax law, tax man, taxes, IRS, red flags, audit, audits, tax audit, this Internet site would be returned in the results list. Based upon the number of times a certain keyword is used throughout the Internet site's meta tags, the higher the relevancy the search provider will afford the Internet site and thus the Internet site will appear higher on a result list for that particular keyword search.
In the area of paid Internet site listings, or typically referred to as “Pay-Per-Click” search engines, Internet site promoters pay for relevancy placing by submitting monetary amounts for certain keywords or keyword phrases to the Internet search engine provider. As such, the higher the monetary amount, the greater the chance of being awarded higher relevancy for specific keywords, thus being listed higher in the return list and subsequently having a greater chance of attracting Internet users.
The search engine provider typically reviews these submissions and determines if the keywords submitted by the Internet site promoter are actually relevant to the Internet site's content in order to maintain the search engine's integrity. If the keywords are relevant, the Internet site's uniform resource locator (“URL”) information is placed on active status in the search engine provider's database. Each URL is then matched to the submitted keywords of the Internet site. The selection and subsequent assignment to the URL of appropriate keywords is the key to successful promoting and for receiving more Internet users to the Internet site.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages and/or shortcomings of known prior art keyword assignment processes and provides significant thereover.